The present disclosure broadly relates to data processing within a printing system. In one particular embodiment, a job is partitioned into job segments that have color separation attributes associated therewith. The job segments are sub-partitioned by color separation and concurrently distributed to appropriate color channels for consumption via a marking engine. It is to be appreciated, however, that the exemplary embodiments set forth herein are also amenable to other like applications.
Electronically generated documents are utilized to record, display and transfer information. Such documents can include word processing files, graphical images, spreadsheets, and electronic mail messages. Printing systems can process image data that describe the content of these documents to render a hardcopy version thereof. Printing systems can vary in scale to accommodate specific throughput requirements related to the amount of imaging data expected to be received and the amount of hardcopy expected to be output. For instance, desktop systems can be employed for low throughput, office and small print-shop systems can be employed for medium throughput and web presses can be employed to meet high throughput requirements. Faster processing and communication between modules is required as system throughput requirements increase. This problem is exacerbated by the use of a single channel to serially process image data within the printing system.
An exemplary conventional printing system 100 is depicted in prior art FIG. 1. The printing system 100 includes an input module 110 that receives jobs transmitted in a page description language (PDL) to provide various instructions to process the job. The input module 110 receives each job to be processed within the printing system 100. A RIP (Raster Image Processor) 120 receives and interprets the PDL used to describe each print job sent from the input module 110, outputting logical sheets in the form of raster images to be rendered on the output media. The logical sheets are sent from the RIP 120 to a contone image processing module 140 that renders contone raster images comprising the logical sheets into a form required by a marking engine 160. A marker channel module 150 processes the logical sheets serially on a color separation basis and then sends them to the marking engine 160 to provide a hardcopy output 180 of the job.
As printing system throughput requirements increase for higher end printers, cost/performance tradeoffs for each of these functions becomes increasingly difficult until the required throughput cannot be met with a simple series pipeline of functions. Greater throughput can be achieved at any stage by replicating one or more functional blocks to enable concurrency, thus partitioning the task at those positions in the pipeline. While this increases the net throughput through these functional blocks, it also introduces new complexity and issues associated with partitioning of the data flow, coordination, and communications.
Accordingly, systems and methods are needed to provide flexible, modular, extensible data processing within printing systems to meet substantially any throughout requirements wherein performance and functionality can be easily scaled.